'Tis a many splendored thing

I like the chain supermarket near my house. No really I do. It is large, carries my favorite brand of cereal and has copious amounts of dead animals(Aisles and aisles of frozen corpses, as far as the eye can see.). Most importantly, it is open round the clock.

I have no reason to complain.

None what so ever.

Um…

Except for one.

Their slogan, catch phrase, national anthem, whatever you may call it is, well, fucked up.

They have signs with it all over the store. Sign that boldly declaim, “I love this store.”

Now, there are two interpretations to this statement. Perhaps unsurprisingly I have a problem with both of them.

The first is that the supermarket is being narcissistic and is brimming with admiration at the supermarket’s beauty and wide display of… stuff. Unable to contain itself, the supermarket loudly proclaims its self love from the roof tops and other high places (Including but not limited to telephone and electrical poles, the top of basketball players heads and the radio antenna behind the supermarket).

Now, being the peaceable, easy going person that I am, I can live with this. As long as I can get the aforementioned cereal, I have no problems.

But, the second interpretation is far, far more sinister. It could be that the supermarket is proclaiming my love for the supermarket. And that scares me. I like the supermarket, one could say that I feel mild affection for it, but I do not love it. I would not donate a kidney to the supermarket if it needed one. I would allow it to borrow my vacuum cleaner, but I would not take a bullet for it. If tomorrow, this supermarket went up to that great big strip mall in the sky, I might shed a quiet tear, and then I’d go back to wasting my time.

The thing is I haven’t been going to this supermarket for all that long, and I do not think we have yet reached that stage in our relationship where we can bandy about words such as "Love". Things are going too fast. I know that this place looks good, but there may be something new around the corner. I think that I should see other super markets. Perhaps ones with longer aisles, or more rounded checkout counters, or maybe ones with shopping carts that did not infernally squeak. And only then make my decision.

I guess the point I am making, (The tumbleweed that blows through this blog faints with surprise. A point in this blog? Tis not possible.) is that no customers fucking love chain supermarkets. They are as interchangeable as things that are easily interchangeable and are often used in sentences as similes for things that are interchangeable. Please for heavens sake, come up with a slogan that is a little less inane. Here is a suggestion: “Rajneesh’s favorite cereal and aisles and aisles of frozen corpses.”